The Good. The Bad. And the Travels.

The Importance of (not) Being German

I knew it! All this traveling must have affected my somehow. Now I have proof: I am not really German (any more … on the maybe very wild assumption that I ever was!).

How do I know? I took the German quiz … and I failed it: http://www.thegermanquiz.com/. The result: I am only 57% German, waaaaay below average. And what can I say?

1. Kipping your windows always seemed ridiculous to me. For the non-Germans reading this: windows in Germany can be tilted open, that’s what we call “kippen” and it seems to be some sort of unwritten law for German households that windows need to be kipped at all times. For me, to be very blunt, that is just stupid. You either have your windows open or closed, leave me alone with all this kipping!

2. Sparkly water. I don’t like it. Okay, I like Apfelschorle (sparkly water mixed with apple juice), but this is about as far as I will ever go. I don’t do sparkly water by itself, it hurts my throat, and I really don’t understand why water has to be fizzy at all. I also find all the different degrees of sparkly water (yessss, in every German supermarket you can find a wide selection, from very sparkly water and less sparkly water,over slightly sparkly water, to extremely sparkly water) very unnecessary.

3. Klugscheissen, which is the German way of being a smart ass. If somebody mispronounces a name, gets a date wrong by one day, or doesn’t know the score of the Argentina-Germany game in the 2006 world cup, you correct them right away, with a slightly annoyed, know-it-all undertone, stretching out the last syllable and raising your voice at the end: “His name was not Roobespierre but Robespieeeeeerrree!” Personally, I find it rude, unnecessary, and in my opinion, the only purpose of Klugscheissen is to boost your own ego. Not that Germans actually mean to be rude or even think of it as offensive … it’s just what they do.

4. Recycling. The German holy cow. You cannot touch it. You cannot question it. And you can never publicly disregard it! I, on the other hand, don’t care. Recycling by people actually has been proved to be inefficiant and they throw all the garbage back together to have it sorted out by machines, that do a better job anyway. They are just scared to tell the German public. You can’t take away their five garbage cans any more! So here, I’ll just go ahead and say it: I don’t care whether the yogurt package goes in the black or the yellow can!!!